writing

How to Run a Critique Group

What do you need to run a good critique group? First you need people. But once you have enough people, running a good critique group needs something more than just kind words and cheerleading. They need structure. We’re working on tightening up our critique group structure in our SCBWI group and I feel like we’ve… Read more »

Protagonist v. Main Character v. Antagonist

  Protagonist v. Main Character I’m struggling with characters in my story and their jobs. I think I have one main character and one protagonist. But I was thrilled to find this post from elements of cinema that provides great examples of stories where the main character isn’t always the protagonist, or the protagonist isn’t… Read more »

Find a Writing Critique Group

If you want to be a writer, for children or otherwise, it’s really important to find a writing critique group. Right now, I’m a member of three different writing critique groups and each one has it’s own flavor, pros and cons. SCBWI There are lots of ways to find writing critique groups online, but if… Read more »

Is the Problem Bad Reading or Bad Writing?

Let’s say you’re reading a book and the author makes a reference to something and you just don’t get it. It could be a phrase, a symbol, a name. Whatever it is, it doesn’t make sense to you. Some readers might feel confused and give the book a bad review. Some readers might just skip… Read more »

SCBWI Western PA Fall Conference

In November 2015 I attended my third fall conference hosted by SCBWI Western PA. I felt very excited for this conference, mostly because I felt very prepared. It’s nice to be past the novice stage and to be heading to an event with clear goals and specific things I wanted to learn. For instance, Valentine’s Day and… Read more »

Reading Newbery Award Books

So I’m going to try and read as many Newbery Award books as possible this year! What is the Newbery? It is an award given to children’s literature by the American Library Association. Here’s the blurb from the website: “The Newbery Medal was named for eighteenth-century British bookseller John Newbery. It is awarded annually by… Read more »

2016 Writing Goals

Ready for some writing goals? I’m gearing up for another year of reading and writing (and running, because that helps more than you might think!) I’m not setting resolutions per se, but I do constantly set goals and work on them. I like to set a mix of short and long term goals, that way… Read more »

Setting up email newsletter

Happy New Year! I love trying new things and here I go again. I’m trying a new way to stay in touch with people: an email newsletter. Check out the upper right area of my website and you’ll see this little green form: I’m not going to send out emails every day or even every… Read more »

New healthy food activity book for kids!

Wouldn’t it be great if there was an activity book that helped kids eat healthy foods? Parenting can get so stressful. We want the best for our kids, but we can’t control everything we do. We can’t force feed them healthy food! Remember the old saying, you get more flies with honey than vinegar? When I… Read more »

Winning NaNoWriMo 2015

I did it! I won NaNoWriMo 2015! I wrote the first draft of my novel, The First Step, in a touch over 50,000 words. Here’s the day-by-day progression of my word count. My boys really enjoyed seeing the word counts grow and as you can see, they also enjoyed writing the updates themselves. At the… Read more »